Why South Koreans are tuning out 2026 Winter Olympics

The South Korean delegation marches during the opening ceremony of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics at San Siro Stadium in Milan, Italy, Friday (local time). Yonhap

The Winter Olympics are back after another four years, but Koreans barely noticed.

The Milan Cortina Winter Olympic Games, which officially opened with preliminary events on Wednesday (local time) before the formal opening ceremony on Friday, have drawn the lowest level of Korean public interest ever recorded for a Winter Olympics. Google Trends data shows domestic searches for "Olympics" have fallen below 10 on a 100-point scale — down from 30 during the 2022 Beijing Games and a peak of 100 when Korea hosted the PyeongChang Games in 2018.

The first live Korean broadcast — a mixed doubles curling match featuring the national team — drew a viewer rating of just 1.5 percent according to Nielsen Korea. The opening ceremony drew a viewer rating of just 1.8 percent.

"It's not the Olympics — it's just an ordinary early February," one small business owner wrote on a popular online community for self-employed people, recalling other big sporting events in the past when people gathered at restaurants and pubs to watch the games together.

Other comments included, "I didn't even know the Olympics were this month" and "In the past, we'd get group reservations even for dawn matches. This time, not a single inquiry."

The waning interest has reached the highest levels of government. At a senior presidential aides' meeting at Cheong Wa Dae on Thursday, President Lee Jae Myung acknowledged the silence and said, "The Winter Olympics are about to open, but it's quiet. I've heard that as national income rises, there's a tendency for interest to drop — but even so, it's too low."

He instructed officials to ramp up promotional efforts so that "athletes representing the country can compete amid enthusiastic support," and even led an impromptu cheer, raising his fist and shouting "Team Korea!" as aides responded "Fighting!"

The disengagement is not uniquely Korean. U.S. broadcaster NBC's prime-time viewership for the Beijing Olympics averaged just 11.4 million — a 42 percent drop from PyeongChang. Ticket sales for Milan Cortina reached about 75 percent of capacity by early February, with nearly 1.2 million of roughly 1.5 million tickets sold, though organizers had relied on late surges and NHL star power to close the gap after a sluggish start that saw only 613,000 tickets sold through October.

A series of Korea-specific factors has amplified what experts describe as a structural global trend.

One of the key factors is an unprecedented broadcasting shakeup. For the first time since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, no Korean terrestrial broadcaster is carrying the Games. JTBC, a cable-based channel, secured exclusive Korean rights for all Olympics and World Cups from 2026 through 2032 in a deal worth over 300 billion won ($204.9 million). Negotiations to sublicense to KBS, MBC and SBS collapsed after JTBC reportedly demanded roughly 100 billion won from each.

Kwak Jun-seok, head of programming strategy at JTBC, speaks during a press briefing on the broadcaster’s exclusive coverage plan for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics at the Fairmont Ambassador Hotel in Yeouido, Seoul, Jan. 14. Yonhap

"The exclusive broadcast infringes on universal viewing rights and undermines the popularization of sports," culture critic Kim Hern-sik said. "At minimum, highlights and Korean athletes' performances should be shared with terrestrial broadcasters."

JTBC assembled a commentary team of former Olympic medalists and said it secured double the broadcast hours of previous terrestrial coverage. But engagement has been tepid: an Olympic promotional video JTBC posted on Instagram drew about 100,000 views — less than half the 260,000 views a dashcam clip uploaded an hour later received.

The "Olympic fever" that once set Korean social media ablaze has been replaced by an eerie digital silence.

Past Olympics flooded online platforms with reaction clips, memes and real-time commentary from the opening ceremony onward. This time, Korean online communities and social feeds are largely devoid of Olympic discourse. The few conversations that do surface tend not to celebrate athletic feats but instead debate why the Games have become so invisible — lamenting the JTBC monopoly and the inconvenient time zone difference.

The 2026 Games are also grappling with a "superstar vacuum." While Kim Yuna's figure skating dominance made the 2010 Vancouver Games a national event, no athletes on the 130-member delegation command a comparable crossover appeal, though medal hopes rest on speed skater Kim Min-sun and figure skater Cha Jun-hwan.

Figure skater Cha Jun-hwan performs during the men’s single short program of the figure skating team event at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics at the Ice Skating Arena in Milan, Italy, Saturday (local time). Yonhap

An eight-hour time difference means marquee events fall during Korea's early morning hours, eliminating the communal viewing culture that once drove commercial windfalls. During the 2022 Qatar World Cup, late-night matches doubled chicken delivery sales, but no such boost is expected this time.

Deeper cultural shifts compound the problem. Yu Jin-hee, an adjunct professor at Chung-Ang University's Graduate School of Advanced Imaging, pointed to the erosion of collective habits.

"There was a time when families sat together in the living room to watch, even during hard economic times. That era is over," Yu said. "Everyone now consumes whatever content they want on their own smartphones."

Yu added that Koreans' emotional investment in national representation has weakened. "People are less inclined to feel that someone else's achievement on the international stage is somehow their own. Korea already has so much cultural content representing the nation globally that the Olympics no longer hold that singular status."

Kim echoed this analysis. "The weight people once felt as members of a nation was far greater than it is today," he said. "Even athletes now approach competition from a perspective of personal fulfillment rather than collective glory."

Meanwhile, online commentators warn of a vicious cycle — fewer viewers means fewer sponsors for niche winter sports, which means less funding for athletes, which could lead to fewer role models to inspire the next generation of Olympians.

Still, fans' posts cut through the noise. "Some athletes give their everything in four years for this moment. For those in unpopular sports, it's one of the few chances they'll ever feel a crowd behind them. I just hope our athletes get the cheering they deserve — even briefly. Team Korea, fighting," an online user wrote.